Attitudes to altitude: changing meanings and perceptions within a ‘marginal’ Alpine landscape – the integration of palaeoecological and archaeological data in a high-altitude landscape in the French Alps

The assessment of the important changes that occurred in late third and second millennia societies across Europe often emphasizes changes in technology and the emergence of associated objects and art forms, changes in burial rites, and developments in economic practices. Notions relating to the evolution of homo economicus dominate many of the discourses, and the evidence for increased long-distance trade / contact across Europe is used to bolster this assessment. These themes are underpinned by an obsession with ever-refined chrono-typological phases. In an attempt to present a more socially embedded perspective, this paper considers the changes that occurred in the uses of the high-altitude, sub-alpine, and alpine zones in the southern French Alps during the third and second millennia BC. From c. 2500 BC onwards, there was a fundamental change in the use of and engagement with this landscape. The first substantial stone-built pastoral structures at high altitude (2000 m and above), appear at this time. This departure in the use and structuring of the alpine space would have included concomitant changes in the nature of mobility, notions of territory, and memories associated with this area.

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High Resolution Chemistry Transport Modeling with the On-Line CHIMERE-WRF Model over the French Alps—Analysis of a Feedback of Surface Particulate Matter Concentrations on Mountain Meteorology

Atmosphere ◽

10.3390/atmos11060565 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 11 (6) ◽

pp. 565 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Bertrand Bessagnet ◽

Laurent Menut ◽

Rémy Lapere ◽

Florian Couvidat ◽

Jean-Luc Jaffrezo ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Air Pollution ◽

Particulate Matter ◽

Air Quality ◽

High Altitude ◽

Wrf Model ◽

Synoptic Situation ◽

Modeling Tools ◽

Meteorological Model ◽

French Alps ◽

On Line

Air pollution is of major concern throughout the world and the use of modeling tools to analyze and forecast the pollutant concentrations in complex orographic areas remains challenging. This work proposes an exhaustive framework to analyze the ability of models to simulate the air quality over the French Alps up to 1.2 km resolution over Grenoble and the Arve Valley. The on-line coupled suite of models CHIMERE-WRF is used in its recent version to analyze a 1 month episode in November–December 2013. As expected, an improved resolution increases the concentrations close to the emission areas and reduced the negative bias for Particulate Matter that is the usual weakness of air quality models. However, the nitrate concentrations seem overestimated with at the same time an overestimation of surface temperature in the morning by WRF. Different WRF settings found in the literature are tested to improve the results, particularly the ability of the meteorological model to simulate the strong thermal inversions in the morning. Wood burning is one of the main contributor of air pollution during the period ranging from 80 to 90% of the Organic Matter. The activation of the on-line coupling has a moderate impact on the background concentrations but surprisingly a change of Particulate Matter (PM) concentrations in the valley will affect more the meteorology nearby high altitude areas than in the valley. This phenomenon is the result of a chain of processes involving the radiative effects and the water vapor column gradients in complex orographic areas. At last, the model confirms that the surrounding glaciers are largely impacted by long range transport of desert dust. However, in wintertime some outbreaks of anthropogenic pollution from the valley when the synoptic situation changes can be advected up to the nearby high altitude areas, then deposited.

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